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Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Goodbye My Classmates, Goodbye My Friends

Nate has had a love hate relationship with kindergarten. Sorry, I misspoke, I meant he hates going to kindergarten.

It's all very odd considering he actually likes his teacher and has friends and enjoys many of the things he does there. It mostly stems from the fact that the things they learn are not that stimulating to him at all and they often take the form of a work sheet. Why yes, Nate cannot do work sheets. How astute of you to notice. This means that when he does one of the many work sheets he has to do - it's just him sitting there telling Annie what to do. Not very engaging for a 5 year old.

Oh - you noticed that I said Annie and not "Nate's nurse". You are a studious reader. Nate's nurse bailed a week ago with almost no notice. This leaves Annie back in the saddle. Anyway, back to kindergarten. Nate does enjoy many aspects of kindergarten but he gets very bored and it's made him more anxious than usual.

Today he was debating the virtues of never going to kindergarten ever again when Annie decided to just go with it and told Nate that he didn't have to go anymore.

Nate LIKED this idea, so he told Annie that he should write a letter to his teacher, Mrs Fox. Yep, that's right, our 5 year-old wrote a resignation letter to kindergarten.

He dictated what he wanted it to say. He was leaving kindergarten effective immediately. In his words, he was not gonna be there anymore - starting tomorrow (Wednesday). What Nate had forgotten though, was that there was a field trip to the fire station on Thursday. So some words were crossed out and some edits made. Read below:

If you couldn't read the photo of the handwriting it says:

Dear Mrs. FoxI know you really love me to come to your classroom but I'm not gonna be there anymore. (upon realizing there was a field trip on Thursday) I'm gonna be there until Thursday. After Thursday I'm not gonna be there anymore. From NatePlease show the kids this letter (didn't want to leave his friends wondering what happened to him #thinkingofothers)

The first time I volunteered in Katrina's kindergarten class, way back in the fall of 1999, I was appalled by the rigidity of it all. I watched the kids stand silently at attention as they listened to the teacher explain EXACTLY how they were going to color a picture, and EXACTLY how they were going to cut it out, and EXACTLY how they were going to paste it onto another paper... That one day almost made me pull her out of school permanently in favor of...I don't know what, and that's why she stayed in public school! I couldn't home-school because I had to work, and my kids had no choice but to stick with the program. But oh, how I wished I had had options!